You satisfy both caution and charity when, by asking me something, you deign no less to burden than to honor me. But since you know that you rightly judge, if not of my skill, at least of my friendship — and that nothing is ever suggested to you by my response except what I wish to be kept by the Church of Vienne — there has followed, then, as you indicated, our son the deacon, Vincomalus: whom may God grant that you overcome evil with good. I have seen a man exceedingly hardened, on whose miseries scarcely anyone, it is clear, can have mercy. Young in virtue, old in faith; he grows cold with age, he burns with adultery. Why say more? It is to be wished that, through a will capable of being turned, he might not be permitted to perish as readily as he pleases.
For when he was rebuked, more in exhortation than harshly, for the crime of incest, accusing our severity solely by the plea of our tardiness, he complained that we had condemned too late the thirty-year fellowship of an unlawful union. To this point I yielded, I confess, to a shameless man: namely, that, deferring the sentence out of love for him, we had preferred to reserve the man's correction to his own compunction and will; and that accordingly it was just that, after the space of so many years, he should at least restrain these criminal ties — he who, by the very advance of old age, ought already to have curbed even lawful ones.
At this, as I believed I perceived, he groaned not contrite but confounded, undertaking for a while to promise that the woman of the unworthy cohabitation should at once be barred from his approach and his sight. I persuaded him, replying that he should promise these things to you, and, repenting of the deed, should ask to be loosed by that authority by which he had been bound. Yet, because you have commanded that I disclose whatever seems good to my judgment, let the separation of the persons suffice for your censure: let the unhappy marriage be cut apart by a more innocent divorce; let an end of the evil suffice as the fruit of strictness. Nor indeed let the promise of him be thought faithful whose life has been unfaithful. Let the amendment to follow be entrusted to those very sureties, by whose intercession the former fault shall be relaxed.
But for the rest, as regards penance, let him meanwhile be admonished to perform it, yet not be compelled to receive it. His own crimes suffice for the unhappy man; nor let there be thrust upon the troubled man, when he refuses, that which ought scarcely to have been entrusted to so unstable a mind even if he had asked for it. Let treachery cease from frailty; nor let an increase of rebellion be heaped upon the mass of carnality. If you command, I suggest briefly, in conclusion: shaken free from his crime, let him be received to pardon; let us grant him penance when he loses the occasion of sinning; let him make profession when he has lost the will to sin.